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A LUMNI N EWS AND N OTES

. ALUMNI PROFILE. Alumni News Editor: MARIANNE WOLFF, M.D. Alumni News Writer: John K. Lattimer: Urologist, PETER WORTSMAN Historian, Collector, Sleuth —A Medical Man for All Seasons By Peter Wortsman

John K. Lattimer’38

Future urologist with barnyard pet

hroughout his long and fruitful career, John K. in 1981. While he was referring Lattimer’38 has often touched and been specifically to the art of collecting, one T touched by history. Innovative academic urolo- of his many avocational interests, his gist, record-setting athlete, veteran Army surgeon on own complex elemental cluster is dif- hand at the Normandy Invasion and the Nuremberg ficult to dissect. trial, noted collector, eclectic author, ballistics expert As a boy stalking pesky crows on and forensic authority on the Lincoln and Kennedy the family farm near Maple Rapids, assassinations, and recipient of more medals than a Mich., young Lattimer learned to lock fine lapel can hold, his epic list of accomplishments onto his wily target and stick with it fills a full 59 lines of “Who’s Who in the World.” His until the job was done, a skill that patients have included such key players in the would come in handy years later— course of events as the man who built the George when he ran the U.S. government effort Washington Bridge (Othar Ammann), Columbia University to stalk and stamp out renal TB—and later still when he applied President Nicholas Murray Butler, actress Greta Garbo, U.S. Pres- his ballistic talents to demystify the much-touted myth of con- ident Warren Harding, aviator Charles Lindbergh, Reader’s spiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He Digest co-founder DeWitt Wallace, the injured survivors of the inherited a healthy dose of curiosity and analytical skill from his Hindenburg explosion, and the notorious defendants at the father, an inventor-engineer and early pioneer in long distance International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. At 86 and count- communication for AT&T. His maternal grandfather, a successful ing, a hip replacement may have slowed his strut and tipped his Michigan physician who took him along on emergency calls, and statuesque 6-foot-4-inch frame a hair, but the verve and gusto a long line of doctors on his mother’s side predisposed him to a still run at full tilt, keeping an interviewer on his toes. medical career. Moving to New York with his family at age 2, he returned to the heartland every chance he got to cut loose on the From Maple Rapids, Mich., lands the Lattimers homesteaded before the Civil War. to Morningside Heights It was there on a Michigan country road one hot summer day “ y theory is that people’s capabilities in their given fields that he first encountered living history in the person of a young Mgrow from a cluster of elements, all of which have to click,” pilot who stopped to give him and a friend a lift. “You know who Dr. Lattimer reflected in a profile that appeared in AMERICANA that was, don’t you?” said the friend, breathless with excitement.

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Lattimer family Michigan homestead

teur Athletic Union 200 meter hurdler (a record unbroken for 12 years) and winning the 50- yard dash at the Millrose Games. During his military ser- vice, he won the 200-meter hurdles for the 7th U.S. Army at the GI Olympics in Germany.

“That was Charles Lindbergh!” All summer long, John Medicine Beckons, Urology Calls Lattimer watched his hero hone the art of skip bomb- r. Lattimer credits Nicholas “Miraculous” Butler, ing on Lake Michigan, a practice put to effective use in Dthe illustrious president of Columbia University World War II. Dr. Lattimer delights in recounting the (and later a patient), for first conceiving the idea, in hilarious and hair-raising tale of how he and his friend 1910, of a medical center comprising hospitals in var- salvaged unexploded bombs as souvenirs, gingerly ious specialties as well as schools of medicine, den- transporting them home via rowboat and bus, thus tistry, and nursing all located in the same vicinity. launching his career as a collector of the arcane. (Fam- Dr. Lattimer’s medical student days and years of Young Lattimer competing ily heirlooms already included several early American training at the Squier Urological Clinic paralleled the for Columbia College silver-hilted swords, including the golden age of P&S. With legends like Dean Willard one brandished by a notable ances- Rappleye at the helm and the world-renowned team of tor, Ethan Allen, at the capture of Robert Loeb and Dana Atchley running the show in Fort Ticonderoga.) Years later, when medicine, the patient population comprised captains Lindbergh, then a patient, came for of industry, international statesmen and royalty, movie dinner, Dr. Lattimer amused his guest stars, and star athletes. In the corridors and elevators by hauling out a vintage bomb Lind- of the medical center, Lattimer remembers bumping bergh had dropped. into the likes of the king of Siam, the prince of Wales, Back in New York, where the fam- the prime minister of Canada, Madame Chiang Kai- ily settled down, Lattimer attended shek, actor Clark Gable, and boxer Gene Tunney. public schools then Columbia Col- Famous as he was, Dr. Loeb was not above ferrying the lege. In addition to the traditional entire class of 1938 over to Seaview on Staten Island course of study, he shone as an ath- to study tuberculous lesions. Renowned (and feared) lete, setting a record as the Columbia for his keenly observant eye, Dr. Loeb also taught stu- decathlon champion and as an Ama- dents a fundamental human lesson: “The patient wants a friend.” It was a message Dr. Lat- timer took to heart and has passed on to generations of P&S students. Dr. Atchley taught the day-to-day rigors of quality care. “When you had one of Atchley’s patients in the hospital,” Dr. Lattimer remembers, “your phone would ring at 5 a.m. ‘What are you going to do with Greta Garbo today? I want to be there!’” But of all his teachers, Lattimer was most dazzled by the competence and

Young Lattimer, far left, competing for Columbia College in the Sprint Relay Championship of America, 1934

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John K. Lattimer’38 as a rotating (surgical) intern on the run for Methodist Episcopal Hospital in Brooklyn, circa 1938

style of the chairman of urology, J. Bentley Squier, who ran the famous clinic established in his name like a gold-plated temple of excellence for all, VIPs and indi- gent patients alike. Arriving on alternate days in a pur- ple paneled Bugatti Royale and a pearl gray Rolls name for himself in cardiac Royce, he sent his liveried footman ahead, hat in hand, surgery). His six weeks of train- to announce his arrival. This lavish manner did not ing at Carlisle Barracks were keep him from personally inspecting the floors on anything but basic. Realizing Sundays. Dr. Squier was famous for his surgical skill that the vast majority of fledg- and speed at a prostatectomy (eight minutes flat!) and ling medical officers had no other delicate operations, time often being a factor of experience in treating gunshot life and death in the days before antibiotics and blood wounds, he pitched in to help. transfusions. Another famous member of the faculty, An expert marksman, he also and chairman after Squier’s retirement, George Fran- participated in Army wound cis Cahill, was a wizard at removing adrenal tumors. ballistics experiments at the For a time, the department became involved in sex anatomy lab at P&S to establish change operations. Christine Jorgensen, the world’s what the Germans were doing to make their bullets John K. Lattimer’38 with his first transsexual, consulted in later years with Dr. Lat- tumble and tear into their human targets. mother and a classmate in timer. What particularly appealed to him about urolo- front of Bard Hall at his P&S gy was its diverse challenge as a discipline, the fact that graduation it combined medicine and surgery with superb diag- nostic techniques. “Where else,” as he said in a profile that appeared in Roche Medical Image in 1968, “can you, in a single morning, relieve one patient from the agony of urinary obstruction, change the sexual char- acteristics of another, and arrest cancer in a third?” Summers were spent working as a ship’s doctor on a Mississippi River steamboat, the Gordon C. Greene. Following graduation, Dr. Lattimer entered the surgical trenches, treating every conceivable kind of wound and trauma as a rotating (surgical) intern at Methodist-Episcopal Hospital in Brooklyn. He returned to Columbia to join the faculty as an assis- tant in urology (and resident at the Squier Urological A young surgical Clinic), earning an Sc.D. degree along with the pres- specialist and hospital tigious Smith Prize in 1943. But trouble brewing train commander, overseas put a hold on his academic career and thrust John K. Lattimer’38, him into history’s path. during World War II From Nottingham to Normandy oining the armed forces, he selected the Air Force Juntil friends pointed out that Air Force personnel did not do any major surgery. He got himself trans- ferred to the Army (thanks to the intercession of a helpful young medical officer at the Pentagon named Michael DeBakey, who later made something of a

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Dr. Lattimer with the president of Argentina, center

Sent overseas to Nottingham, Eng- land, he bided his time before the impending invasion by, among other endeavors, training a drill team of nurs- es, thereby attracting the attention of Winston Churchill, his picture making it (for the first of three times in his career) to the front page of the New York Times. “Boy, You Got to See This! All fun and games came to a sudden and dramat- This is History!” ic end on D-day. Dr. astor Henry Gerecke, the Lutheran chaplain of the Lattimer recalls the P98th General Hospital and a friend of Dr. Lat- experience of treating timer’s, was transferred to see to the spiritual needs of the enormous number high ranking Nazi prisoners pending trial and later to of seriously wounded walk the condemned to the gallows. Held at first at an casualties of the Nor- old resort hotel in Mondorf-Les-Bains in Luxembourg mandy Invasion at (American code name, “Ashcan”), the defendants were makeshift evac hospi- later sent to a prison in Nuremberg to face the tribunal. tals ashore and back in Chaplain Gerecke urged his friend to accompany him: Great Britain as “a terri- “Boy, you got to see this! This is history!” ble, terrible time.” With While pursuing his duties at the hospital, Dr. Lat- hundreds of evacuees timer was one of several physicians who tended to the suffering multiple life-threatening wounds to kidney, prisoners’ medical needs throughout the trial. In his Dr. Lattimer drilling Army bladder, and genitals and limited blood plasma avail- compelling book, “Hitler’s Fatal Sickness and Other nurses in preparation for able, he and his colleagues had to perform triage, Secrets of the Nazi Leaders,” published in 1999, the the Normandy Invasion, operating on those most likely to survive. He worked author taps his firsthand experience, as well as medical 1944, in the photo that fast and furiously and, on occasion, had to confront scholarship and speculation on the historical ramifica- made the front page of a pistol in the trembling hand of a GI whose buddy tions of Hitler’s Parkinson’s disease, which, he believes, the New York Times hadn’t been picked. ultimately led Hitler to make the rash military judg- When, at last, the Allies took the blood-soaked ments that cost Germany the war. Much of the book is beachhead, Dr. Lattimer’s unit went on to Antwerp, devoted to Dr. Lattimer’s impressions of the defendants Kassel, Frankfurt, and, finally, Munich, where a large from the point of view of a physician. While most elicit- German civilian hospital was ed his unqualified contempt, Albert Speer, the only re-tooled as the U.S. Army’s defendant to admit his guilt and take responsibility for 98th General Hospital and the crimes committed under his watch, earned Dr. Lat- Dr. Lattimer took over as timer’s respect. Impressed by Speer’s obvious intelli- chief of urology/surgery. gence and a willingness to face the truth, the author paraphrases the observation of a colleague on the American medical team, prison psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (who trained at the New York State Psychiatric Institute), who compared Speer “to a young race horse of great capability who was John K. Lattimer’38, new chairman of the wearing blinders. He could Department of Urology, circa 1955 see straight ahead and all he did was to run to his greatest The Lattimer family capacity without realizing the

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consequences.” The highest ranking and most notori- He helped awaken public awareness of ous defendant, Reich Marshal Hermann Goering, the fact that prostate cancer is the lead- earned Lattimer’s grudging avowal of a keen and wily ing cause of cancer deaths in men over intelligence. His wile served Goering well in his final 65, thus helping urology to come into hour, managing to cheat the hangman with a hidden its own. The then newly created Office ampoule of cyanide. The ampoule container itself is of Urology at the National Institutes of now a part of Dr. Lattimer’s large collection of memo- Health awarded his department its first rabilia from the trial. training grant. As governor of the American College of Surgeons, he ran Winning the War Against Renal TB that distinguished body’s educational and Other Victories and urological programs. eturning to the United States, Dr. Lattimer rejoined Dr. Lattimer likewise attracted Rthe urology faculty at P&S and the staff at Presby- national and international spotlight in terian and Babies hospitals. Likewise serving as an the field. He was appointed by Presi- attending consultant in urology at the Veterans Admin- dent Lyndon B. Johnson as a consultant to the World istration hospital in the Bronx, he headed the research Health Organization in 1968 and rose to the presiden- Dr. Lattimer with wife unit for genitourinary tuberculosis. Among the notable cy of the International Society of Urology and the and son, Jon’77, at his medical accomplishments of the post-War period, his American Urological Association, the first person ever inauguration as president team applied a new drug, streptomycin, later adding to hold both high offices. He later served as president of the International Society PAS and isoniazid, to help stamp out renal TB. of the Clinical Society of Genitourinary Surgeons and of Urologists, Versailles, At P&S, meanwhile, Dr. Lattimer, whose busy uro- the Society of University Urologists. France, 1973 logical practice included both adults and children, His publications in peer-reviewed journals number began to gather and study the considerable body of more than 350, and he is a former medical consultant data his pediatric service had amassed over the years. to Time Magazine, guest editor for the Medical Exam- Pediatric urology was “a sleeping giant waiting to be iners Gazette, and contributor to Encyclopedia Britan- awakened,” he recalled in a videotaped interview con- nica. His professional encomia have included the ducted in 1982 by Emory Medical School Dean P&S Alumni Gold Medal and the Dean’s Distin- James Glenn, in the AOA series, “Leaders in American guished Achievement Award, Medicine.” Dr. Glenn acknowledges Dr. Lattimer as the Morgenstern Foundation one of the field’s founding fathers. Combining his Freedom Award for his role at diverse talents at scholarship, administration, and Nuremberg, the Great Medal of spreading the word, Dr. Lattimer stunned the old the City of Paris, and a medal guard of the American Urological Association by fill- honoring his role in the libera- ing a 2,500-seat auditorium at the annual meeting of tion of Paris personally given to the American Academy of Pediatrics with urologists him by the mayor of Paris (and and other practitioners from around the country now French president) Jacques eager to hear his findings. And so, almost overnight, Chirac. In 1987 he was the first the pediatric urology subspecialty was born, first at recipient of the National Kid- P&S, then nationwide and worldwide. ney Foundation’s award for Rapidly rising in academic ranks, he was named outstanding achievement in professor and chairman of the Department of Urology urology and in 1996 he received the Keyes Medal, the John K. Lattimer’38 and director of the Squier Urological Clinic in 1955 at top honor of the American Association of Genitouri- shaking hands with Paris age 39. In the course of his tenure, which lasted until nary Surgeons. Named lectureships were established Mayor Jacques Chirac his formal retirement in 1980, Dr. Lattimer increased in his honor at five learned societies. (now president of France) the number of medical students who opted for what when he received a had previously been, in his words, “an underappreci- Lattimer, the Collector medal commemorating ated field” and raised millions in endowments (includ- hile pursuing his multiple medical activities, Dr. his role in the 50th ing substantial personal contributions) to support WLattimer always found time to keep up his vast anniversary of the departmental research. Stressing more imaginative and diverse collection of historical objects—things, as he liberation of Paris teaching methods, he urged urologists to think of puts it, that “perpetuate your contact with the moment.” themselves as “watchmakers, rather than plumbers.” An avid history buff, he made the front page of the New

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York Times a second time when, dressed and other findings, Dr. Lattimer backed the report of up as his ancestor Ethan Allen, he led a re- the Warren Commission and completely discounted enactment of the taking of Fort Ticon- the elaborate tales of conspiracy theorists. His book, deroga. Dr. Lattimer has for many years “Kennedy and Lincoln, Medical and Ballistic Com- helped coordinate the Metropolitan Muse- parisons of Their Assassinations,” became a best sell- um of Art-sponsored Medieval Festival at er when it was published in 1980. New York’s Fort Tryon Park as a public In 1990, Dr. Lattimer published a third book, event, complete with jousting and tilting. “This Was Early Englewood: From the Big Bang to the His collection includes the early- George Washington Bridge,” detailing the history of American swords, now on loan to the his longtime home. He is currently working on a Metropolitan Museum of Art and the book on his silver swords. National Portrait Gallery; such World Although one of his ancestors, Bishop Hugh Latimer War II trinkets as German lugers, Goer- (the family spelled its name differently then), was John K. Lattimer’38 ing’s car armor, and original Hitler drawings; and burned alive by Bloody Mary in 1550 (just outside what accepting the Gold memorabilia pertaining to the two assassinations that would later be Dr. Lattimer’s window at Balliol College Medal from the Alumni rocked American history, those of presidents Lincoln at Oxford) for refusing to recant his Protestantism and Association, 1971 and Kennedy. another fell at the Battle of Lexington, kicking off the American Revolution, he and his wife, Jamie, live Lattimer, the Assassination Sleuth peaceably in Englewood, N.J. in a grand old home that Dr. r. Lattimer’s extensive holdings relating to the Lattimer laughingly labels “a urologist’s paradise,” complete DLincoln assassination (including a blood-stained with nine bathrooms. His daughter, Evan, followed in her collar, a glove, and a cuff of the shirt mother’s footsteps as an artist. Lincoln wore to Ford’s Theater the His two sons, Jon K.’77 and night he died) and his research and Douglas G.’84, have taken after writing on the subject increased his their dad: Both are academic interest of the events of Nov. 22, 1963, urologists. the day President John F. Kennedy was A devoted alumnus and shot in Dallas. The parallels between dedicated educator, Dr. Lat- the Lincoln and Kennedy assassina- timer has guided the gen- tions were astounding, as were the par- erosity of his patients toward allel legends of conspiracy. Tapping his upholding his legacy at own experience in ballistic research P&S, where an endowed and his knowledge of firearms, Dr. Lat- professorship-chairmanship John K. Lattimer’38 timer immediately got to work on a in urology and two research testing a rifle like the scientific forensic study of the circum- funds bear his name. Having one used by Lee stances of President Kennedy’s death. graciously declined a salary Associate Dean Anke Nolting with Harvey Oswald as Recognized for his knowledge in the back in 1955 when he took John K. Lattimer’38 at his 80th part of his ballistics field, he was the first non-government over the reins of the Depart- birthday party study of the Kennedy investigator granted access to the ment of Urology, he discov- assassination Kennedy autopsy materials, including X-rays, pho- ered to his dismay upon his retirement that he had also, tographs, and bloodied albeit unknowingly, forfeited a pension. Should push clothing. On Jan. 9, 1972, come to shove, he could always work the old family Dr. Lattimer once again farm (all 400 acres) or sell off choice holdings like his made the front page of the massive mastadon molar tooth or objects from his New York Times, with a Napoleonic collection, including a little item of urolog- photograph in which he ical and historical interest that attracted an Italian tele- demonstrates on his own vision news team to interview him in 1992—the head the location where the emperor’s penis, allegedly excised by the Corsican bullets struck the president. pathologist who did the autopsy. “Urologists are vital,” Based on his tests of the rifle Dr. Lattimer quipped to the visiting Italians, “but used by Lee Harvey Oswald pathologists always have the final word.”

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